Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Do you even know how cloaks work? The vast majority of ships CAN'T SNEAK UP ON YOU WHILE CLOAKED. Only recons and covops/bombers can. Recons and covops also have a 5+ (depending on skills) sensor recalibration period that prevents them from decloaking and immediately locking a target. When combined with recons' relatively poor scan-res, this means you've got at least ~8 seconds to get away before the hostile recon can even lock you. If you're in a smaller ship or the hostile pilot has worse skills the number of seconds increases. If the hostile recon counters their bad scan-res by fitting sebos, they sacrifice tank to do so, leaving their already-fragile ships even more vulnerable to return fire. If the hostile is flying a covops, they have better scan res but still have to deal with recal. Additionally, they're a goddamn covops-- they have no ehp and are relatively slow and clumsy for a frigate.

The only ship that can slowboat up to your ****ing ratting ship and decloak / insta-lock you is a stealth bomber. If you seriously can't counter a goddamn bomber in your ratting ship you are ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AT EVE and deserve what you get.

Stop whining about cloakers and start learning to play the game better.

What mechanic are they using, to interact with you and attempt to create fear, whilst they are AFK?

High five! correct Robert.. cloaking itself needs no counter that isn't already there.. Snipe, your biased statement assume the strawman that there is no counter or drawback on cloaking as it stands and this is simply not the case.

We've sat here and listened to a butt load of ideas for years on how to nerf cloaking and none are workable to do anything but make cloaking worthless for its intended use. No new or original ideas have come up in these threads for a very long time.

At the very least the thread was not named "AFK Cloaking" which is a misnomer.. when most of these anti cloak people are honest, they admit that they don't really care about the AFK. They just use the afk argement to try to demonize cloaks in order to "WIN" a nerf against cloaking in general.

Removing the cloaked from local makes sense and would serve to stop AFK complaints.. but If it does not happen, nothing needs to change for cloaking.

Why do you assume the cloaked is the aggressor? I beg you to remember that many defenders rely on cloaking as well and a mining op has the ability to use cloaks to suprise a ganking "intruder" just as easily as the other way around. "Zero risk" is hyperbole at it's best..I have lost cloaked vessels in the past.. anything you do to cloaking will make this even more likely.

Cloaks in space are not the submerged vessels from your example a few hundred feet beneath a sonar ship, they are across the solar system in many cases deep in a "safe spot".. You trying to out one of these cloakers would be like you detecting a sub with sonar in the pacific from the atlantic - it's not going to happen. but if they are on top of you (on your grid).. you can do a whole host of things that might work to out the cloaker.

Good try, but again the arguement is not new.

Removing the cloaked from local would also work to the advantage of the uncloaked as the cloaked would never know if there are more of you waiting to strike.

I chose to use the "local traffic stream reporting bot" as a straw man because about three years ago while laid off, IRON was clearing out the last of the karttoon-era goons from JLO-Z3 and the surrounding area. Because I was laid off, I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with, so it wasn't uncommon for me to be on 16+ hours a day, and at somewhat random and "not normally staggered" times. Some Goon petitioned me as a bot, though it didn't take long for CCP to do a quick look at my kill history (feckloads of POS mods and one really stupid rifter ) and a two minute convo to establish that I was, in fact, human.


I use 'aggressor' and 'defender' only because there has to be some frame of reference, and for the bears about to drown us in tears (wait, lemme get my catch basins out), their view is that the ebil ebil cloakie is the aggressor, and they the defender. You say it's like trying to sonar ping a sub in the Atlantic while you're in the Pacific, but whalesong carries that far, and drowning the system in combat probes really ought to turn up *something* (cue line from Red October... "Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet.")

The idea of removing a cloaker from local isn't something I would have considered previously (see my previous posts), but I think it might have potential. Person jumps/worms into system, links to the gates, shows up on local. Upon activating cloak, the "ghost" of their presence remains for, ohh (sake of argument) 10m, then disappears. Is the cloaker still here? Yes? No? As long as the cloaker doesn't move, they stay off local, so they can sit 110k off a station or gate all day and report the comings and goings, but the locals will never know. When they do move, they show up on local again (gate detectors have recognized the existence of your ship in preparation for your potential jump request), leaving the natives to wonder just what you're up to (and the bears to go scurrying for cover like roaches when the lights turn on). I also see the potential for some real mind-screwing psy-ops type stuff if this is implemented... slowly infiltrate 10 cloakies, then have them take turns showing up in local, two or three at a time.

So, you agree with me that cloaked ships DONT EVEN POSE A THREAT to properly set-up ratting ships, but because carebears are so terrible, cloaking should be nerfed anyway?

As for your earlier comment "I can't bait an AFK cloaker," that's bullshit. No, not in the technical sense, but in the practical sense-- if they're AFK, you can't bait them, but they can't kill you. If they are there, they can kill you, but you can bait them. How is this in any way "asymmetric?"

local does exist and shows the cloaker.. you have your whale song.

Yes, we are in agreement that an AFK ship poses no threat at all, and that it's impossible to bait someone who's AFK. Where you're calling BS on "I can't bait a cloaker" is that solo, I can't come up with something that I feel you're likely to take or that gives me a reasonable shot at winning. Now, I could be wrong (I've always been the one sneaking in, doing spying, and maybe lighting up a hot drop cyno), so if I rule out something, by all means point it out.

That said, here's my problem... If there are 200 of my alliance mates in local, you're not going to bite anything unless it's a one-bomb kill. Anything that takes longer is liable to result in a 'ceptor raining on your parade. Likewise, if I know via intel channels that you've got 200 fellow reds only a jump or two away, I've already gone and packed up my things, so you'll be stuck there staring at my POS (while I sit on the triggers for warp scrams and turrets) for however long it takes your balls to turn blue. So I'm stuck trying to figure out what I can use to bait you. Frigates are out, they're too flimsy to withstand even a single bomb. Cruisers.... maybe. I whipped up a Vexor fit that could withstand a bomb plus some torpedoes, but if you came across a "mining" Vexor, is that something you'd chase? Anything bigger than a cruiser, I'm guessing you'd probably pass on as being too large to attack effectively. But here I am in that Vexor, and between turrets and drones, I'm only getting 260dps max. I'm not confident that's enough to put you out of my misery before you're able to burn out of range, given drone travel time and turrets not hitting for max damage at extended range.


Basically, I've never given much thought about removing cloakers from local. To me it's always been one of those "even more broken than AFK cloaking" solutions, but I'm warming up to the idea. I'm not (I don't think) breaking blockade running because as it currently stands, runners in k-space already show in local no matter what they're doing (sitting at a safe point halfway between gates, setting up for a breakout attempt 175km from a gate, drinking with their buddies at the bar, etc). While the "ghost" lingering in local for x minutes after cloaking up could tip off the campers that the blockade runner is either inactive or doing something, the runner could play the same sort of mind games against the campers that a bomber could against bears. Nudge yourself forward 5 meters, shut down the engines. Zig 5 meters that way, wait for the delay, then zag 5 meters the other... is that runner getting ready to make a breakout attempt, or just fsckin' toying with us?

I really don't know what to tell you, other than that almost every part of this argument is wrong.

- I will attack ratters, even solo, in systems full of hostiles
- I don't fly bombers
- A properly-fit Drake or battleship is usually enough to fend off or kill a solo attacker
- I will attack your Vexor and I'll kill it. It's a goddamn Vexor. I'm bringing ~200+ m isk worth of ship to the table, why would you assume you can effectively bait and kill me with a ~10m isk ship?
- Sometimes if I know you have a defense gang up, I'll go and take your bait with the intention of goading your interceptors onto the field (so I can kill them)
- I don't fly bombers
- How is you hiding in a POS so radically different from me hiding in a safespot with a cloak? Neither of us can kill each other, and we can both see that the other is in local. You can go AFK in your POS to make my balls bluer, I can AFK in my safe to keep your wallet smaller.
- Consider using something better than a Vexor?
- ??
- I don't fly bombers
- If you can't get more than 260 dps out of a Vexor, you're doing it wrong

What does any of this have to do with cloaking?

Also, who says you have to engage me solo? If you want to really ruin my day, why not just get 20 of your closest friends into a ratting fleet and hit the anoms? There's no way I can kill your battleship / whatever before your friends can arrive and at least force me out of tackle range. But carebears don't want to have to go to the effort of organizing people and fitting ships properly. They just want to rat in peace all the time without the risk of losing their ships. Hence threads like this one!




I actually do live in CCP's office. I'm on the fourth floor, between the GM punching bag and the cafeteria. Come find me in my tent when you want to discuss highsec buffs!

Anti-cloak is coming. Read CSM minutes. It was mentioned there.


The problem isn't the solo cloaker. It's the fact that he can be on top of you with a cyno/covert cyno lit with ships jumping in in less seconds then you have fingers on one hand, and bombers insta lock after uncloaking. You can't lock and kill a bomber before you are tackled by his friends jumping in, not in anything you're tanking anoms in.

To big alliance like GoonSwarm it's not a problem, they can just move to the next system, but for small budding alliance with only a system or two, it's devastating.

Try not to listen too much to most goons, most are born trolls, coming from SA and all, as well as not really being effected having 116 of their own systems to rat in. It's not hard for them to avoid afk-cloakers, hence why this tool is so up in arms defending it, he doesn't see it as a problem because for him, it's not one.